Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[adsii1970]

I think one of the worst movies that I've seen in a while, besides Gravity was Event Horizon. Now in all fairness, any movie produced by the SyFy channel should be put on this list, no questions asked...

[DAL59]

1 hour ago, KSK said:

. Any sort of interstellar travel (unless the film is some moody psychological piece about being trapped on a generation ship or something) is going to involve some... speculative...science.

IF you want a completely accurate, current tech(in fact the story is set now) interstellar mission, read Rocheworld. He actually published a paper describing his method.  A paper I had on my computer and now cannot find  

29 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

any movie produced by the SyFy channel should be put on this list, no questions asked...

except the expanse

Decelaration!

 

[monstah]

38 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

I think one of the worst movies that I've seen in a while, besides Gravity was Event Horizon.

Event Horizon is, in my opinion, one of the best bad movies ever XD 

It's terrible, but I find it so fun. Sam Neill's over-the-top performance (which, in his defense, seems more like bad directing than bad acting) is so bad, yet so great. One of my favorite guilty pleasures... And, on-topic, the science is not even trying, so I'm okay with it. Like Star Wars science

[tater]

I agree on the uncanny valley stuff. I actually didn't mind Gravity all that much, because it was so visually pleasing. I was cursing out some of it in real time as I watched it, mind you, but kept watching.

I think part of my hatred for Interstellar was because it was hyped as super accurate from a science standpoint. They really played up the black hole stuff. That just made the errors stand out, plus it put me in "hunt the errors" mode from the start.

Anyone claiming accuracy just got me to watch it through a filter.

[Just Jim]

1 minute ago, monstah said:

Event Horizon is, in my opinion, one of the best bad movies ever XD 

It's terrible, but I find it so fun. Sam Neill's over-the-top performance (which, in his defense, seems more like bad directing than bad acting) is so bad, yet so great. One of my favorite guilty pleasures... 

Oh, agreed... In my opinion it's like this weird cross between The Black Hole and The Evil Dead... 

[FleshJeb]

2 hours ago, monstah said:

Event Horizon

My favorite fan theory about Event Horizon is that it takes place in the Warhammer 40k universe, and is mankind's first encounter with the forces of Chaos.

 

2 hours ago, Just Jim said:

The Black Hole

Still my favorite Disney movie, if only for the mood and atmosphere.

[kerbiloid]

I like The Black Hole very much, too. It's so meditative and unusual. It's like a golden standard of Evil Dark Scientist for me. _{If I could be like him! If I could be like him!}
The black hole with its accretion disk behind the windows is absolutely magnificent.
_{(Though a lack of Hans Zimmer or Michl Britsch due to the year of issue).}

Btw about Michl Britsch, so Pandorum.
Why did they eat the crickets(?) in the lab? What did the crickets eat in turn?
It seems to me that Antje Traue's character just mocked the trusting guy, while in fact she had a pantry full of canned food.

Why did they need to restart the reactor? And why this is done with a single Reset button? Why the reactor Reset button was not in a pilot cabin?

Edited February 1, 2018 by kerbiloid

[p1t1o]

12 hours ago, Nikolai said:

... and in that clip, you can actually see the rotation between 2:15 and 2:19 if you're watching for it.

The only shots I see that show orientation with respect to the planet have Bullock in the frame, and she's much closer to the center of rotation and doesn't move a whole lot.  Plus, you know, it's a long tether.  And it's hard to determine how the axis of rotation lines up with views of the planet below (perspective is hard in this scene, and in space generally).

I can't contest that, because a lot of people seem to miss that it's there.  Still, it seems to me that the fact that the force is there should be the sort of thing that makes people look for what they might have missed if they can't find it, not flatly state that there's nothing.

Are you sure?  Such a rotation would be very gentle, as we've discussed.

Also, it's not the only way to pick up rotation.  If you speed towards the end of something much heavier than you are, and give yourself a kick in some random direction as you leave, but are restrained to the end by a tether, you'll pick up rotation.  (So will the heavy thing, but much less noticeably so.)

If its so gentle you really have to watch for it, they cant be experiencing that much g-force.

If the tether is say, 50m long and we'll be really generous and say their angular velocity is 5deg/s (which would be eminently visible) you get a total force at George Clooney's (assuming George is a 100kg mass) wrist of...38N (going up to 76N if the tether is 100m long with the same angular velocity)

Now I know that Sandra is not securely attached, but thats very little force, and would be a very visible rotation.

If the extant forces are around the 10-100N order of magnitude, I wouldnt be surprised if a human could throw that piece of tether (that George has a hold of) with enough force to arrest his "fall", saving himself.

Plus I cant think of any rotation that would not bring them both back into contact with the station, Sandra doesnt drop him, he lets go on purpose.

Blergh, the more I think about it, the more the scene erks me.

[monstah]

Well, you could assume there's some elasticity in the tether (I have no idea whether that's realistic or not), and the force is that of their deceleration. 

I watched that movie once and I liked it. You're all ruining it for me now

[Racescort666]

I can't believe we went 6 pages in this thread and no one mentioned the movie Signs.

I think I have to agree with many of the other commentators that there is an uncanny valley of science in a movie. If you try really hard to make your movie realistic and miss some glaring mundane detail, it's about as cringeworthy as running from the slasher into a knife factory rather than to the police station.

That being said, I'm enjoying Dark Matter on SyFy because it's got about as much phlebotinum as Star Trek and doesn't really try to explain science any further.

[KSK]

13 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

I think one of the worst movies that I've seen in a while, besides Gravity was Event Horizon. Now in all fairness, any movie produced by the SyFy channel should be put on this list, no questions asked...

Wasn't it Event Horizon which had the 'Ion Drive' scene with everyone getting installed in these super high-tech acceleration pods to protect them from those (no doubt bone-crushing) millinewtons of thrust from said ion drives? 

Or it may have been some other film. Either way I have that scene pegged as one to giggle at rather than rage at.  I just have this mental image of some of the crew trying to jury rig their acceleration pods as hibernation pods instead. 

"We could handle the g's but not the boredom."

Edited February 1, 2018 by KSK

[radonek]

11 hours ago, Nikolai said:

Also, it's not the only way to pick up rotation.  If you speed towards the end of something much heavier than you are, and give yourself a kick in some random direction as you leave, but are restrained to the end by a tether, you'll pick up rotation.  (So will the heavy thing, but much less noticeably so.)

This. If you come to think about it, there is no way for poor Sandra to get hold of that tether without imparting lateral motion. I think this is raised by people who just do not want Clooney to die. Seriously, there are a lot of other things wrong in that flick, but Clooney gets all the attention.

I actually like Gravity because it get a lot of things right. Zero-G is not just people flying around - it's also about lack of reference point. Spacecraft interiors are properly claustrophobic. People are using tethers.  The guy who got hit has frost on face…  They even took time to find out correct terminus technicus for Soyuz main propulsion unit. How many people on this planet can appreciate that tiny detail? But what really got me was the sound department. It's the only movie I know that get this sound-in-space thing right. Seriously, whether you subscribe to idea that proper soundscape in space is dark humming or silence with classical music, just listen to this movie.

15 hours ago, _Augustus_ said:

In addition, how does the Ares 4 MAV have enough propellant to take off with Watney? I know Watney was on Mars for a pretty long time, but they mention that the arrival of Ares 4 would still be 4 years away for some reason (I guess it's because they have to clean up Hermes in orbit first?). If that's the case, if they're landing the MAV so long before the mission shouldn't it still need a couple more years to produce propellant?

MAV fuel plant is apparently limited by available energy. The book states tht RTG provides 100W electrical, and even have Watney ramp up CO2 production for his water project by adding more power. He could do the same at Schiaparelli. 

15 hours ago, _Augustus_ said:

CNSA would/will never work with NASA.

Are you sure it's not the other way around?

15 hours ago, _Augustus_ said:

Does the Rich Purnell maneuver even work? If they used an Earth gravity assist to fly by Mars at a great speed, wouldn't that trajectory put them on a solar orbit with a further out aphelion, somewhere in the asteroid belt, adding years to their journey? And wouldn't they need a lot more fuel to perform Earth orbit insertion?

Taking spacecracft designed for Mars travel down to somewhere around Venus orbit? Probably not. But orbital-mechanics wise, it's well researched.

Spoiler

 

 

[Just Jim]

21 minutes ago, KSK said:

Wasn't it Event Horizon which had the 'Ion Drive' scene with everyone getting installed in these super high-tech acceleration pods to protect them from those (no doubt bone-crushing) millinewtons of thrust from said ion drives? 

I don't remember that part. Event Horizon starts off as a mission out to Neptune, to rescue the crew of the ship of the same name. And it's OK enough at first... 

But about halfway through the movie it takes this sharp left-hand turn and something along the lines of The Black Hole suddenly morphs into Hellraiser... in space. 

That's where it just gets... silly...  

[MaxwellsDemon]

15 minutes ago, radonek said:

I actually like Gravity because it get a lot of things right. Zero-G is not just people flying around - it's also about lack of reference point. Spacecraft interiors are properly claustrophobic. People are using tethers.  The guy who got hit has frost on face…  They even took time to find out correct terminus technicus for Soyuz main propulsion unit. How many people on this planet can appreciate that tiny detail? But what really got me was the sound department. It's the only movie I know that get this sound-in-space thing right. Seriously, whether you subscribe to idea that proper soundscape in space is dark humming or silence with classical music, just listen to this movie.

I agree, they did get a lot of things right.  Which just makes me irritated that they went 80%-90% of the way and stopped.  I mean, at least throw something in there to explain how the Hubble, the ISS, and a Tiangong-somethingth are all in virtually the same orbit.   Or... you get the idea.   Not going to continue to batter the deceased equine.   But that's what makes it jarring to me.

 

ETA:  As I go along, I find more and more that fiction is not half as interesting as nonfiction.  So there's that factor, too...

18 hours ago, KG3 said:

 

  My pet peeve is the 2009 Star Trek reboot film.   Spock tries to keep the Romulan's sun from blowing up by injecting it with "Red Matter".  Red Matter, really? 

There's a long tradition in the Star Trek franchise of this sort of technobabble, going right back to the beginning... in the early days, they mentioned "lithium crystals."  The problem is that lithium is a real substance with known properties.  Ergo, "dilithium" was born, that could do whatever the writer wanted it to do.

Edited February 1, 2018 by MaxwellsDemon
addition

[radonek]

@MaxwellsDemon I guess that is matter of expectations. I expected the Gravity to be stupid action flick, so getting it 80% right was positive surprise. Then I went for the Martian expecting liberties with story, but it could at least be executed with comparable attention to detail. After all, they got lots of the research done for them, they just got to read the book carefuly. Nope, it's blinkenlights again. (Same thing with the Interstellar btw, I did not expect anything from that one, but it's painfully obviously a great movie that got barbarically raped by standard issue clichés, to the point of total disappointment.) 

[MaxwellsDemon]

Understood.  I guess the thing is that I'm picky and if they're going to be 80% realistic, why stop at 80%?

Edited February 2, 2018 by monstah
Language filter skirting removed

[PB666]

49 minutes ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

There's a long tradition in the Star Trek franchise of this sort of technobabble, going right back to the beginning... in the early days, they mentioned "lithium crystals."  The problem is that lithium is a real substance with known properties.  Ergo, "dilithium" was born, that could do whatever the writer wanted it to do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilithium In later Star Trek it would be meta-Francium. 

You can't really compare Star Trek tech with Gravity. Star Trek was completed before there was an ISS and a man on the moon. If we don't forget many of the plot devices now have real world analogs.

 

Edited February 1, 2018 by PB666

[p1t1o]

48 minutes ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

There's a long tradition in the Star Trek franchise of this sort of technobabble, going right back to the beginning... in the early days, they mentioned "lithium crystals."  The problem is that lithium is a real substance with known properties.  Ergo, "dilithium" was born, that could do whatever the writer wanted it to do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilithium

And guess what. A crystalline compound of lithium and deuterium has been touted as a possible fusion fuel source for space engines. Not exactly dilithium crystals, but give'em some credit!

http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-trek-researchers-to-begin-fusion

 

1 hour ago, radonek said:

This. If you come to think about it, there is no way for poor Sandra to get hold of that tether without imparting lateral motion.

Thing is, its still bogus if they were rotating. Clooney doesnt lose his grip, he suicides. If there was rotation, a few seconds would bring him into contact with the ship, and if there was no rotation, theres no force.

I think its pretty clear they at least are not rotating with anywhere near enough speed to produce intolerable g-forces.

Anyhoo, I'll quit bashing Gravity, it *is* one of the best real-world space movies ever made, artistic license an'all.

[MaxwellsDemon]

3 minutes ago, PB666 said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilithium In later Star Trek it would be meta-Francium. 

 

Heh!   But does it crystallize?

(Re the "invention" of dilithium... that comes right from World of Star Trek, I believe, so the writers were trying to invent a fictional substance.  Guess they didn't know about the real dilithium any more than I did!)

Edited February 1, 2018 by MaxwellsDemon

[p1t1o]

Fricken ninjas!

[KG3]

22 minutes ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

I agree, they did get a lot of things right.  Which just makes me irritated that they went 80%-90% of the way and stopped.  I mean, at least throw something in there to explain how the Hubble, the ISS, and a Tiangong-somethingth are all in virtually the same orbit.   Or... you get the idea.   Not going to continue to batter the deceased equine.   But that's what makes it jarring to me.

 

ETA:  As I go along, I find more and more that fiction is not half as interesting as nonfiction.  So there's that factor, too...

There's a long tradition in the Star Trek franchise of this sort of technobabble, going right back to the beginning... in the early days, they mentioned "lithium crystals."  The problem is that lithium is a real substance with known properties.  Ergo, "dilithium" was born, that could do whatever the writer wanted it to do.

Remember that Gene Roddenberry was trying to address social issues of the day by taking them out of the context of 1960s America and putting them in space hundreds of years in the future.  I guess I should cut Star Trek some slack in the science department.

I liked Gravity but honestly how much acceleration can you get from a fire extinguisher and what are the odds that she would have landed in water within swimming distance of land?  But that's the movie business.  The writers need to make everybody happy.  The director wants to make something visually appealing, the big name actors want screen time, the editors want to make the story move at a pace, the producers want to find people to put up the cash and the investors just want to get people into cinemas and make money.  Allot of fingers in pie!       

  

[PB666]

7 minutes ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

Heh!   But does it crystallize?

(Re the "invention" of dilithium... that comes right from World of Star Trek, I believe, so the writers were trying to invent a fictional substance.  Guess they didn't know about the real dilithium any more than I did!)

You have to be careful, the matrix of lithium tritide and lithium deuteride that was considered as one of the cause of the overpowered H-bomb test was a tightly guarded secret in 1965. Lithium is believed to be part of that because it trapped neutrons and became plausibly part of the power production.

[MaxwellsDemon]

15 minutes ago, KG3 said:

Remember that Gene Roddenberry was trying to address social issues of the day by taking them out of the context of 1960s America and putting them in space hundreds of years in the future.  I guess I should cut Star Trek some slack in the science department.

  

As I mentioned earlier, I don't ding 'Trek' for inattention to scientific realism, because they seldom even try to be very close on it-- it's not really the intent to begin with.  Roddenberry wanted it to be a recognizable future as a framework for telling stories, and that's about the extent of it.

It's the ones that are billed as realistic (and aren't) that bug me.

10 minutes ago, PB666 said:

You have to be careful, the matrix of lithium tritide and lithium deuteride that was considered as one of the cause of the overpowered H-bomb test was a tightly guarded secret in 1965. Lithium is believed to be part of that because it trapped neutrons and became plausibly part of the power production.

Interesting.  Entirely coincidental, of course, since it wasn't something the writers "inventing" dilithium knew anything about, any more than Jonathan Swift "knew" that Mars had two moons.

Edited February 1, 2018 by MaxwellsDemon

[p1t1o]

22 minutes ago, KG3 said:

...what are the odds that she would have landed in water within swimming distance of land?  

This caught my eye

Total coastline length is hard to calculate because they are fractal, but google gave me an estimate of 372000miles of coastline.

Lets be generous and say "swimming distance" is 10miles.

So 3.72million square miles of valid landing area, in a total area of 197million square miles. So theoretical probability is around 2%

This is just a very broad guess though, as she was bound to land somewhere close to her orbital track, and without knowing more about that, and the land that lies underneath it, its harder to say - but 2% seems like an adequate guess. Not impossible, but she got pretty lucky!

 

17 minutes ago, PB666 said:

You have to be careful, the matrix of lithium tritide and lithium deuteride that was considered as one of the cause of the overpowered H-bomb test was a tightly guarded secret in 1965. Lithium is believed to be part of that because it trapped neutrons and became plausibly part of the power production.

Oh its much more than believed. The stimulated decay of Li6 into tritium was well understood, however Lithium7 - which made up about half of the lithium present was assumed not to take part in the reaction. It did however, and the yield was tripled. More tritium made for greater neutron flux, which enabled more of the uranium radiation case to fission, which is where the majority of the extra energy came from.

Edited February 1, 2018 by p1t1o

[radonek]

12 hours ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

Understood.  I guess the thing is that I'm picky and if they're going to be 80% realistic, why stop at 80%?

Well, the way I heard it, they had 100% version that trudged for several hours of (supposed) boredom. Probably lots thinly veiled explanations of orbital mechanics to unsuspecting victims audience. I harbor hope we might some day get it in book or comics.

12 hours ago, KG3 said:

Remember that Gene Roddenberry was trying to address social issues of the day by taking them out of the context of 1960s America and putting them in space hundreds of years in the future.  I guess I should cut Star Trek some slack in the science department.

True. I will cut heaps of slack to, say, the City on Edge of Forever. I won't  touch the reboots with an insulated pole for exactly same reasons.

Edited February 2, 2018 by monstah
Edited quoted content